During the early part of this decade, lobbyists, former FCC chairmen Michael Powell and Kevin Martin and a sundry bunch of random carpet baggers were all very vocal and enthusiastic in pushing a technology called broadband over power-line. Never mind the fact that BPL didn’t quite work and very quickly was overtaken by other more sane and feasible technologies. Today, it seems BPL has finally been put to rest.
Today, the City of Manassas, Virginia which spent $1.6 million building a BPL network decided to pull the plug on the network. About 500 residental and 46 business customers accessed the network that was costing $100,000 a month to maintain. They paid $24.95 a month. At one point, it was viewed as the most successful BPL network. Well, that isn’t really saying much.
